MasterLeaks Gets PayBack

So, in addition to hackers shutting down the sites belonging to Visa, MasterCard, Assange's bank, the lawyers prosecuting Assange, WikiLeaks itself and nearly taking down PayPal, there have been plenty of other troubles that have oddly worked in WikiLeaks's favor, or at least been countered.

Let's take a look at WikiLeaks's host site, EveryDNS. EveryDNS opted to drop the wikileaks.org domain after it succumbed to the DDOS. Plenty of people will say the government intervened as well, but for now we'll act as if it was all decision by the site. After the main domain was removed, two more sprouted up; wikileaks.ch and wikileaks.nl, both supported by EasyDNS (not to be confused with EveryDNS). Following that, hundreds of mirror sites began popping up all over the web. When we say you can't kill something on the Internet, we mean it. Despite the main website being taken down, all of the mirrors and supporters continue to keep the site up and running as if nothing ever happened. The World Wide Web is a tricky place to fight.

One of the more notable effects here is the response of the US government. Interestingly enough, it's not what WikiLeaks is releasing that's embarrassing the US the most, but it's our government's response to the matter. For example, Peter King—a key Republican Congressman and soon-to-be chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee—wants WikiLeaks to be declared an international terrorist organization, and for Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. The government has been bashing both Assange and his site from the start, as well as helping to convince a number of corporations to stop supporting WikiLeaks to begin with. Nevermind the cables; the government essentially wants to shut down Assange's site and silence him forever. Is that not a bigger embarrassment, and the whole point of WikiLeaks to begin with?

There is also an official name for the mass DDOS war taking place. An appropriate title in my opinion, it's been dubbed Operation: Payback.